Snipers Describe Classified Program To Lure Iraqis With 'Bait' And Kill Them

[kurth]

U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents With 'Bait'
Snipers Describe Classified Program
By Josh White and Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 24, 2007; A01

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents. The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items. "In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301431.html

[EFerrari]

1. Mired in unblinking stupidity. n/t

[DS1]

2. Even a jaded asshole like me can see the problems with this

If something is as obvious as "Hey, this is a bomb" then nobody would go near it, if something is not so obvious and says "Hey, this might be a bomb" then some people who don't know shit about bombs might pick it up, while the real bombers would avoid it.

This is just dumb. And wrong. And it should be stopped, now.

[EFerrari]

5. Do you remember when they dropped packets of "food"

into Afghaniston that were packaged in the same colors as bomblets?

I don't know why these stupid motherf#ckers haven't killed us all yet.

[DS1]

6. Yes, I remember that

That was a total disaster. It what happens when gun-happy dipshits like Bush, and the Generals in charge don't stop and think for a minute about what they're doing.

[0007]

26. I can't even give 'em credit for being smart enough to 'think' - nt

[gateley]

3. How sleazy. nt

[Ghost in the Machine]

4. "they'll be greeting us as liberators with hugs & flowers"...

Yep, we've liberated over a million of them right off the face of the earth, and liberated another 4 million of them from their homes..

Dawg Bless America!

[MiniMe]

24. They left off the "and then we'll kill you"

[Richard Steele]

7. Great way to shoot well-meaning folks in the neighborhood.

If I see some ammo or det cord lying around on -MY- street,
what's the first thing I'll do?

PICK IT UP. I'm gonna pick it up and take it home, so none
of the local kids find while I'm waiting for the proper
authorities to arrive and take charge of it.

How many of those "insurgents" were just decent folks acting
in the interest of SAFETY?

And how goddamn EAGER TO COMMIT MURDER do you have to be
to PRETEND that you don't know that?

[EFerrari]

8. Who do you have to be to come up with a program like this one?

We need a 1-800 - YOU'RE IDIOTS number for the Pentagon.

[Richard Steele]

14. A murderous, subhuman scumbag, that's who. nm

[Kelly Rupert]

17. A black-and-white thinker in a war zone will do. n/t

[Richard Steele]

23. Really? How do you figure? nm

[Kelly Rupert]

28. Like so:

"The world is divided into Good Guys and Bad Guys. Our job is to kill the Bad Guys. Bad Guys take bombs and kill Good Guys. Therefore, we will plant bomb components outside. Good Guys will have no interest in them, because Good Guys don't use little bombs like that. Bad Guys will take them and use them to kill us, because we're Good Guys. So we'll kill them once they prove they're Bad Guys by picking up the bomb and walking away with it."

[Kelly Rupert]

9. This does not seem to be well-thought-through.

"I will place some packages here. Anyone who shows interest in these packages is clearly a terrorist who plans to use them against Americans. The following are not possibilities:

1. The person does not recognize them, and is wondering what they are.
2. The person wishes to remove them so terrorists do not use them.
3. The person is a member of a neighborhood-defense militia and plans on using them against foreign terrorists.
4. The person is concerned with his survival and plans on using them to defend his house against death squads.
5. The person is destitute and plans on selling them for scrap."

[Timex]

11. i agree with your points n/t

[bbgrunt]

10. this is totally criminal--but the objective of this

occupation is to create a hell hole and make money. So I imagine that the fault is not in the "thinking through the tactic" but in getting caught.

[Kelly Rupert]

12. Realistically, if we wanted to make a hellhole,

we're doing a terrible job of it. We could easily make Iraq far, far worse than it already is. We simply need to reconvene indiscriminate aerial bombing, stop using the military to engage in aggressive militias, death squads, and terrorists, and begin more Fallujah-like operations, only this time without giving anyone a chance to evacuate first.

We could then re-disband the Iraqi army, re-decapitate the Iraqi government, and stop patrolling the streets, creating a true power vacuum. We could sit in our fortresses, venturing out only to raze neighborhoods that began showing a semblance of order. Or, we could decide to simply support one side, encouraging a genocide of the other.

If the objective of the war is undiluted cruelty, we're doing a piss-poor job.

[wtmusic]

15. So we should be satisfied with diluted cruelty

Please, your argument is laughable.

[Kelly Rupert]

16. My argument is that the US goal in Iraq is not cruelty,

as our actions are not consistent with that goal. Do you disagree with this?

I have not claimed that the situation in Iraq is in any way defensible. I believe it is the result of gross incompetence, not premeditation.

[wtmusic]

19. Whether cruelty is a goal or not is irrelevant

Dead civilians are still dead. And they are dead because in our blinded lust for Iraq's oil wealth American soldiers don't give a rat's ass which Iraqis are which, so why not pull the trigger to be safe?

What would a competent invasion of a sovereign country entail? :crazy:

[Kelly Rupert]

20. That may be,

but it is completely irrelevant to my argument with the post I was replying to. Nobody ever claimed anything that would be negated by what you're writing. Of course war is cruel, and of course this war was a bad idea, and of course the damage caused is caused regardless of why it's being caused. The poster claimed it was deliberate, and I said, 'no, that doesn't make sense, so it has to be caused by incompetence.'

Please, when barging into arguments, ensure that one of the parties is actually making the point that you intend to argue against. Really, we don't have a disagreement here. You just got a bit itchy with the trigger finger.

A competent invasion of a sovereign country would rather obviously be a UN-mandated multinational invasion in which the opposing resistance is quickly and relatively-bloodlessly nullified, the opposing head of state is quickly captured and tried in the Hague, and a new government is quickly elected, with minimal interruption to state services and no violent "postwar" power struggles or insurgent activities.

[riverdeep]

27. Perhaps.

But it is a remarkable coincidence that their incompetence just happens to enrich Bush administration benefactors. Whether that be oil companies or Halliburton or Blackwater.

It's also possible that without ANY journalists or other chance of word leaking out, what you described ealier (i.e. razing the country) would be their preferred plan. This may be just what they're able to get away with, for now.

[bbgrunt]

29. well, the motives of everyone involved in this operation

are not the same. I think we have mercenaries to do the really dirty criminal work while the official troops can be engaged in activities that sound or are legitimate for the most part. Just because we are doing a "piss poor job of it" doesn't mean that it is not the end game envisioned by those in power. There are too many people with good will and ideals that have to be enticed to support the effort by the appearance of good motives.

Do you think this admin. really wanted to help during Katrina? They had to APPEAR to help while multiple level fuckups took their toll. Then, no one could be held accountable because every one was pointing their finger at everyone else. These are disasters that are engineered through neglect and basic high level decisions such as changing rules at the top--like calling the Geneva convention outdated or forcing rules on the Iraqi government that prevents them from pursuing any retribution for acts committed by troops or mercenaries.

I don't believe that most of those in the military or most of those who fervently support the war (except those who wish to just nuke everything) believe that the objective was to create a hell hole, but some people at very high levels are sure taking it to the bank and have every incentive to prolong the misery.

[Eric J in MN]

13. The US puts bullets in front of a man's house. When he picks them up, the US kills him. NT

NT

[Swamp Rat]

18. This is premediatated murder of innocent civilians...

because that is who will be picking up those devices in order to protect their children............ and they know it.

[TheUniverse]

22. Fucking murdering bastards.

To hell with them.

[Exultant Democracy]

30. You are right this is nothing but murder?

[TheUniverse]

21. Simply horrible.

Charge whoever thought up this program with war crimes. Picking an object on the street is not grounds for getting murdered. The more I read about Iraq, the more I get angry, and the more I think we are terrorists. This is so pathetic. How is this any different from something Osama would do?

[riverdeep]

25. It's things like this that make me shake every 16 to 22 year I encounter

and practically yell at them to not join the military.

"The U.S. military alleges that Vela, on Hensley's order, shot the Iraqi man twice in the head with a 9mm pistol after he had been taken into custody. It was Vela's first kill, and he was visibly shaken. "He looked weird," Sgt. Robert Redfern testified. "Just messed up from it. How would you feel if you had to shoot someone?"

But you know, OJ breathed again...

[BreweryYardRat]

31. Okay...

"The U.S. military alleges that Vela, on Hensley's order, shot the Iraqi man twice in the head with a 9mm pistol after he had been taken into custody."

That right there -- shooting a prisoner, and then planting a gun on him -- if that's true, I believe that's a capital crime, and Hensley and Vela should both be hanged for it.

The baiting program as a whole has already had all its major problems described, so I don't feel the need to address those.

[NNN0LHI]

32. Add another war crime to the stack n/t

[formercia]

33. It reminds me of local Bear hunters.

A pile of donuts gets them every time.

We have a family friend who is a very good wildlife photographer. I was looking at one of her closeups of an obviously mature Black Bear and wondered aloud if she used Snickers Bars to get him in close. She replied that a 5 gallon bucket of old cake frosting she obtained from a local bakery worked even better, but the Bear soon adapted. She was sitting in her blind next to the bucket when she heard a scratching noise only to see the bucket disappearing into the bushes. She never saw the Bear.

That trick will only work for so long.